The Player Next Door

That would mean the risk of running into Dottie again, seeing her in action. I haven’t talked to her since the night I found out about her dalliance with Dean, and aside from a text a few days later in which she told me I can’t possibly be angry with her—because I must understand how she couldn’t say no to that opportunity—as expected, I haven’t heard from her.

But going out to meet up with friends later, together, means our discretion will fly out the window. There’ll be no hiding this relationship anymore, regardless of what we tell people. I mean, Bott saw the chemistry between us from afar.

Shane must know that.

“Why? What do you want to do tonight?” he asks, his warm, strong fingers working in small circles over my shoulders and back.

I imagine those same hands peeling off my clothes, and heat courses through my veins.

I know what I don’t want to do.

I peer at him from beneath my lashes. “I don’t want to take things slow anymore.” Not physically, anyway. I punctuate my meaning by pressing my body into his.

In his eyes, lust flares.

Against my stomach, his erection swells.

He opens his mouth and I brace myself for him to give reasons why we shouldn’t—I might scream—but whatever words he was planning on saying fall away, unspoken. A decision flickers across his face.

In one smooth move, Shane leans in to crash his lips into mine and seize the backs of my thighs. “Neither do I.” He hoists me into the air with no effort. I scramble to get closer to him, throwing my arms around his neck as he guides my legs around his waist. I squeeze tightly.

“I’ve waited forever for this,” he whispers, his hands finding their way to my backside. We’re moving then, Shane’s strides purposeful, his lips still on mine as he carries me into his bedroom.

Together, we dive onto his bed, tangling in a mess of limbs and fervent lips. We fumble with our clothes, in a rush to rid ourselves of them. My anticipation to finally feel Shane inside me is making my hands tremble with excitement.

“I’m such an idiot for ending things between us,” he murmurs against my mouth, fitting his hips between my thighs, his bare skin searing against mine as he covers my body with his. “I’ve been thinking about this nonstop since I saw you sitting on your porch.”

“You perv. But same.” I part my legs to welcome him in. “Except when I wanted to kill you.”

He laughs, but it instantly morphs into a primal moan with a single roll of my hips. His tip prods at my entrance, as if begging to slide in. There won’t be any foreplay this time. These six weeks have been one long, torturous stretch of seduction.

“You’re impatient.” He nips playfully at my earlobe. “Hold on.” He rolls off me and fumbles in his nightstand for a condom.

My heart pounds in my chest as I admire his firm, tanned body, stalling at his erection—thick and long and rigid. What would it be like to pleasure him with my mouth? I wondered that many times that summer, back when I had no experience and was afraid of cultivating rumors.

Okay, maybe a bit of foreplay.

“Wait.”

Shane freezes as he’s bringing the packet to his teeth to tear it open. His eyebrows arch in question. And perhaps trepidation that I’ve changed my mind.

My lips curl with a smile. I maneuver to hover over his hips, letting my breath skate over his hard, perfect flesh. There isn’t an inch of this man that isn’t, dare I say, pretty.

“Oh, fuck,” he whispers when he realizes my intention, and his breathing grows ragged. “I thought maybe you were against giving them because of, well, you know.”

“Shane?”

“Uh-huh?”

I swirl my tongue over the tip of his penis much like I did my Patty Shack ice cream cone, earning his sharp inhale. “When a woman is about to put your dick in her mouth, you shouldn’t start talking about her mother.”

His abdominal muscles clench with his grating chuckle. “I’ll try to remember that.”

I shift my focus, giving the underside of his length the flat of my tongue, beginning at the root and sliding all the way back to the end, where I’m treated to a bead of salty moisture. I slide my lips over his head.

He makes a strangled sound that I feel between my thighs and then he reaches down to scoop my hair back, wordlessly coaxing me to continue. Wrapping my hand around the base of him, I fall into a steady tempo of sucking while I jack him off, relishing the taste and feel of him as he whispers soft “deeper, faster, more” instruction and moans sweet praises that convince me I could happily pleasure him like this for hours. Every so often I steal a glance upward, to find intense, molten eyes watching me, his expression one of raw desire.